Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Left in crisis
- 1 The political economy of the aes Left
- 2 The political economy of new municipal socialism, 1981–6
- 3 The political economy of post-Fordist socialism
- 4 Towards a decentralized socialism? The political economy of producer co-operatives and labour-managed firms
- 5 “In a world which is not of their making”: The political economy of producer co-operatives and labour-managed firms
- 6 The political economy of market socialism
- 7 Whatever happened to Keynesian social democracy?
- 8 The apotheosis of labour: knowledge-driven, supply-side socialism
- 9 Embracing the Anglo-American model, or, whatever happened to radical stakeholderism?
- 10 Multinational socialism
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Towards a decentralized socialism? The political economy of producer co-operatives and labour-managed firms
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Left in crisis
- 1 The political economy of the aes Left
- 2 The political economy of new municipal socialism, 1981–6
- 3 The political economy of post-Fordist socialism
- 4 Towards a decentralized socialism? The political economy of producer co-operatives and labour-managed firms
- 5 “In a world which is not of their making”: The political economy of producer co-operatives and labour-managed firms
- 6 The political economy of market socialism
- 7 Whatever happened to Keynesian social democracy?
- 8 The apotheosis of labour: knowledge-driven, supply-side socialism
- 9 Embracing the Anglo-American model, or, whatever happened to radical stakeholderism?
- 10 Multinational socialism
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The 1960s and 1970s in Britain saw a marked increase of interest in the idea of workers' control and worker ownership that manifested itself in a number of ways. It was apparent in the political economy of writers such as Stuart Holland and Michael Barrett Brown, and through their work, and that of others, it became a significant current of economic thinking within the aes. It drew inspiration from the New Left libertarianism of these decades and from that anti-statism and support for the democratization of economic decision-making that has been touched on in earlier chapters. It was fuelled by the work of the Institute for Workers' Control, established in 1964, that produced a stream of publications in the 1960s and 1970s to inform the work of trade unionists who were active and interested in formulating plans for the worker control of the firms in which they were employed. The idea was also taken up by trade union leaders such as Jack Jones, general secretary of the tgwu, and Hugh Scanlon, of the aeuw, and it helped to inspire work-ins and sit-ins such as those at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and Fisher Bendix in the early 1970s. These developments provided a fertile soil in which a Left political economy, that had at its heart the idea of the transformative capacities of producer co-operatives, could take root and flourish. The next two chapters will consider this political economy as it was articulated in Britain and elsewhere.
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- Left in the WildernessThe Political Economy of British Democratic Socialism since 1979, pp. 123 - 145Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2002